I had the same problem doing an auto upgrade to 2.9.2. Manual reinstall didn’t help. I solved it by renaming the Plugins directory which deactivated all of them. Then I systematically turned them on until I found the culprit, which was Google Analytics (haven’t solved that problem yet).
I did this last summer on one of my first WP sites. I had to think a bit about how I did it, but as I recall I think I ended up using the Static Front Page plugin.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/static-front/
Here’s the site, pretty simple.
http://www.littleredschoolhousehayward.com
I’m building a new site where I need to do the same thing and I see that WP2.1 apparently offers this:
http://codex.ww.wp.xz.cn/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page
